Chương 10
For years, I had mistaken that calculation for loyalty.
Maybe it had been fear.
Maybe those things had become the same inside her.
“I should’ve told him the truth years ago,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“You agreed not to.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
The answer came more slowly than I expected.
“Because you asked.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
I leaned against the table.
“I liked knowing something he didn’t.”
Claire looked surprised.
“I hated the way he talked to me, but there was a part of me that enjoyed letting him be wrong.”
“That sounds more honest.”
“It’s also uglier.”
“So are most honest things.”
She opened the door.
I almost said her name.
I did not.
She left.
When I returned upstairs, Marcus was standing beside my desk with three folders arranged in a row.
Rebecca was on the phone near the windows.
Sophie had moved from the conference room to the couch in my office and was watching a baking competition with the volume low.
One contestant was crying over collapsed pastry.
It seemed like a healthier crisis.
“How’d it go?” Marcus asked.
“Badly.”
“Good.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“If you came back saying it went great, I’d be worried.”
Rebecca ended her call.
“That was outside counsel.”
“And?”
“We can issue the nine terminations today, but they recommend delivery tomorrow morning unless there’s an immediate safety concern.”
“Why?”
“Because sending employment notices on Christmas Day creates unnecessary optics.”
Marcus nodded.
“And unnecessary cruelty.”
“They stole from the company.”
“Some did.”
“He harassed an employee.”
“Nathan did.”
Marcus tapped the folders.
“You keep turning nine people into one person.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged.
“You hired me to say things you don’t like.”
“I’m beginning to understand why nobody invites you anywhere.”
“My wife invited me home.”
“Go.”
“In a minute.”
Rebecca gathered the remaining files.
“We also need to prepare administrative leave notices for several yellow cases where access poses risk.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Martin?”
“Possibly.”
“He’s already on leave.”
“Verbally.”
“Right.”
Rebecca looked tired now.
There were faint shadows beneath her eyes.
I felt guilty for pulling both of them into my family disaster on a holiday.
“I’m sorry.”
Marcus looked suspicious.
“For what?”
“For today.”
“Oh.”
He zipped his laptop bag.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Become sentimental because it’s Christmas.”
“I’m apologizing.”
“I know.”
He put on his coat.
“Pay me well and stop undermining HR.”
“That’s your holiday wish?”
“I’m a simple man.”
Rebecca almost smiled.
They left shortly after one.
Before leaving, Rebecca made me promise not to contact any Collins employee directly.
Marcus made me promise the same thing twice.
Sophie and I stayed behind.
I expected relief once the office emptied.
Instead, the silence felt larger.
She closed her laptop.
“So nobody got fired?”
“Not today.”
“Why not?”
“Because doing the right thing badly can still be wrong.”
She considered that.
“That sounds like something Rebecca said.”
“It is.”
“Thought so.”
I sat beside her.
“Hungry?”
“Very.”
“Chinese food?”
“Still yes.”
We found one restaurant open six miles away.
The dining room was crowded with families, hospital workers in scrubs, two police officers, and an elderly couple who appeared to know every employee by name.
A paper dragon hung crookedly over the register.
Sophie ordered enough food for four people.
“You know we’re not stocking a bunker.”
“I didn’t eat yesterday.”
“You ate expired chocolate.”
“That was medicine.”
We sat in a booth beside the window.
Outside, dirty snow had collected along the curb.
Inside, a little boy at the next table was attempting to drink soy sauce through a straw while his mother negotiated with him in increasingly desperate whispers.
Sophie watched for a moment.
“Parenting looks terrible.”
“It has difficult quarters.”
“Would you recommend it?”
“Ask me when you’re thirty.”
She pointed a chopstick at me.
“Suspicious answer.”
Her phone buzzed.
The change in her face was immediate.
“Who is it?”
She turned the screen facedown.
“Claire.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“No.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
The food arrived.
For a while, we ate without talking about anything important.
Sophie complained that the hotel pillows felt like bags of laundry.
I told her I had once slept three nights in a van during our first year in business because I could not afford both a motel and replacement transmission.
She accused me of trying to win the suffering contest.
I admitted I was.
Then she said, “Did Mom know about the company?”
I stopped with my fork halfway to my mouth.
Her mother rarely entered conversations without some warning.
“Yes.”
“From the beginning?”
“Almost.”
“Did she care?”
“About the company?”
“About you having money.”
“No.”
That answer came easily.
Sophie nodded.
“She always said you’d work yourself to death.”
“That sounds like her.”
“Do you miss her?”
The restaurant noise seemed to move farther away.
“Sometimes.”
“You never talk about her.”
“You have her number.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I looked at my plate.
“I know.”
Her mother, Rachel, had left Ohio when Sophie was six.
Not disappeared.
Not abandoned her in the dramatic sense.
She sent birthday gifts.
Called.
Visited some summers.
Paid what she could when she could.
But she had chosen a life in Oregon with a new husband and a career that did not bend easily around a child two thousand miles away.
I had spent years trying not to speak badly about her.
Eventually, silence had become its own kind of statement.
“She was unhappy here,” I said.
“With you?”
“With a lot of things.”
Sophie waited.
“Yes,” I said.
“With me too.”
“Why?”
I smiled without humor.
“Apparently I have a habit of going quiet instead of fixing personal problems.”
She looked at me over her noodles.
“That sounds familiar.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I pushed my plate away.
“Your mother used to say she couldn’t tell whether I was calm or just absent.”
“Was she right?”
May you like
“Sometimes.”
Sophie looked out the window.
